Official Raspberry Pi mini-computer user guide is coming, but where’s the actual unit?

If you are one of the first people to receive the initial batches of the $25 or $35 Raspberry Pi mini-computers, you may be excited to find that the makers of the product will soon launch an official guidebook to help you make the most use out of the cheap chips. The user manual aims to help everyone from total beginners to coding kings learn more about programming Raspberry Pi regardless of their technical knowledge — a vision Raspberry Pi makers had always envisioned by creating such an affordable computer.

Put together by Eden Upton and Gareth Halfacree and published by Wiley & Sons, inside the book you will find various projects ranging in difficulty levels. Learn anything from basic tasks such as getting the computer to recognize SD cards to setting Raspberry Pi up for media entertainment centers or building a robot. For those afraid of even the simplest tasks, the book will also cover extremely beginner’s checklists, such as knowing where to attach an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor — items you will have to provide on your own.

Of course, for more advanced users, this book isn’t purely just for obvious guides. The more technologically-apt can also read on to learn more about programming in Scratch and Python as well as non-computer skills such as how to solder. If you don’t think you need all this information, the Raspberry Pi Foundation also aims to release a condensed version of the first six chapters in the book to help you get started while saving a bit of cash.

The official Raspberry Pi user guide will be released in the United States and United Kingdom in both e-book and paperback versions. You can pre-order yours today for $20 from Barnes & Noble, or £11.70 Amazon UK. No official launch date has been announced just yet, and the cover art may change, but given the simplicity of Raspberry Pi itself, we won’t expect anything more fancy than what’s already mocked up.

In the meantime, we’re still hoping to get our hands on one of the unit, if at all. Ever since its launch back in late February, the hot-ticket item has been so hard to get an order on that by the time we receive a unit, all the projects might be freely available via YouTube tutorials. Some great ideas we’ve seen so far include setting up an in-home security system, building an arcade emulator, and programming it to control your home light switches. Perhaps you can even combine Raspberri Pi with ifttt technology to really get things totally remote and automated. What do you think we’ll receive first: the user guide or the computer unit itself?